Karen Spiegel – who supports the Gas Tax, Cap and Trade, the High Speed Rail and sports $1K from Planned Parenthood has jumped the shark.

She raged on her opponent Eric Linder for – you guessed it, BEING A REPUBLICAN! (The Horror)

The Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood gave Eric Linder an F! GASP! Karen Spiegel says, vote for me because I am NOT F Rated by the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood! (She supports Cap and Trade and is sporting a $1K check from PP, right???)

Once I stopped laughing, I realized that the local GOP has gone berserk over some of the hit pieces in this election. I hope they grab a copy of this one… because they look kinda foolish.

I figured I’d pen this post as the world of politics is a small one. At 47 years old, I am at the age where I have known everyone in the political scene for 15-20 years. This post is my personal opinion, with a summary of information, and is an amalgamation of my personal history with Eric Linder juxtaposed with research on both him and Karen Spiegel.

I first met Eric Linder in 2003, during the Recall Election. For those of you scoring at home, that was 15 years ago.

Linder, then 24(!) years old was a leader in a young Republicans Group. He was supporting Arnold for Governor, I was supporting Tom McClintock. Most everyone was supporting Arnold. In my own family, only my Brother and I voted for McClintock in the recall election.

Later, Eric Linder started a company that specialized in mass emails (similar to Constant Contact). I ended up getting an account from Linder because people were sending in spam complaints to shut down my blast emails. I had been shut down by Mailchimp, Constant Contact and others because people with tech savvy knew how to rig complaints against the emails I was sending out.

Myself and fellow Conservatives were in a battle with the liberal wing of the GOP in 2011. They were running a “Proxy Drill” that was less than above board in an attempt to adopt a new GOP Party Platform that was devoid of Pro-Life, Pro-Family and Pro-Gun positions. In fact, the platform that the drafting committee put out was so devoid of content it was unclear about the issues of taxation and regulation by government.

The proxy drill was unprecedented as conservatives from the North and Center of California were being called and asked for their proxy votes which were then being assigned to Bay Area liberal Republicans. While proxy voting has been legal under CAGOP By-Laws for years, there was no precedent for it being abused like this.

I was able to use Eric’s email platform (in addition to this blog) to effectively get the message out to people that their proxies were ending up in the hands of moderate/liberal Republicans that did not share their values. The current CAGOP Platform which is not completely right-wing by the way was saved from this attempt to pull it way left.

Eric Linder received several phone calls from people attempting to silence me and he refused to shut me down.

I had almost forgotten about this battle until I found some stuff in an old file about “Snattlerake Hosting”. That was Linder’s service. In 2011, the RightonDaily Blog was less than 2 years old and had only a fraction of today’s traffic. The defense of the Conservative GOP Platform was one of the first political battles that www.rightondaily.com fought, and it involved Eric Linder!

In 2012, The Assembly Districts had been redrawn and the GOP ended up without a candidate for Assembly. Eric Linder was recruited by then CAGOP Chairman Tom Del Becarro (whose defense of the Conservative GOP Platform is probably his biggest contribution in an otherwise failed tenure) and others within the GOP establishment.

Linder amassed a largely conservative record as a member of the Assembly. He made some votes that deviated from Conservative Orthodoxy where he was “Voting his District” as AD60 is a marginal (aka Swing) district.

The facts are that Linder has some excellent marks from the Republican perspective from his time in the Assembly: He is A- Rated by NRA. He is Pro-Life. He is A or A- Rated by Business Groups. Eric Linder never voted for a Tax Increase or a Cap and Trade Scheme. I do find it deliciously ironic that unions like the SEIU and others are lining up behind Linder for Supervisor as he is more Conservative (and Principled) as demonstrated by his record in the Assembly than Karen Spiegel is as demonstrated by her record in the Corona City Government.

Based on the research I have on Karen Spiegel, there are some stark contrasts I will be drawing between her and Linder.

I am 100% aware of some of Linder’s personal issues, I also wrote about his past failings as a candidate for office. I am sure Spiegel and crew will bring out some of Linder’s issues as I fully expect the Supervisor Race to draw big money and a lot of attention. I never put my own reputation on the line without knowing the vulnerabilities of the candidates I support. I do believe that any of Linder’s foibles pale in comparison to the litany of questionable actions by his opponent.

As a personal note interestingly enough, I had just gotten sober when I met Linder. I have literally known him for a lifetime. When I met Eric Linder I was single, never married and 100+ pounds heavier than I am now, so we have both seen each other go through some life changes in those 15 years. It has been an interesting journey that has brought us back to the same side of a political fight again years later, as I had not really taken his supervisor race seriously after he had lost his assembly race two years prior.

It is my opinion borne from personal experience that Eric Linder is the right choice for Supervisor in the “Corona” district in Riverside County. Hindsight on the Primary indicates that I should have paid attention sooner as it appears Eric Linder was indeed the best choice of the four that ran in the first place.

Spiegel on paper sounds like a good candidate, a city council member, a lot of experience in government, some community service, etc. Many that spoke to me on condition of anonymity, indicated that Spiegel is aggressive, brusque and plays fast and loose with the facts. The fact that people in the local area were reticent to go on the record speaks volumes and sounds all too familiar in Riverside County.

I have known Eric Linder for about 15 years. I first met him when he was in young Republicans. He backed in to the Assembly and ended up getting two terms, the re-election was due largely to the fact that the dems did not field a candidate against him. Linder is far more passive as a candidate than I’d ever recommend and some of the knock on him is that he does not make fundraising calls nor does he do the groundwork necessary to win.

Eric Linder does have a lot of residual name ID, which is how he emerged atop the field despite being buried in spending by Karen Spiegel and a democrat machine behind the crazed Penny Newman. There was a bonus candidate from the City of Riverside, but Sup D2 is not about Riverside and he cratered.

Spiegel’s issues appear to run quite a bit deeper than her difficult personality. In endorsement interviews, she appears to have been caught double-speaking, and is alleged by several people to have shown open disdain for participants at political events. While neither are unusual in a campaign (lying and being a primadona), the overall pattern starts to paint a picture of an ineffective pariah as a supervisor.

Spiegel is a Registered Republican and has been in her 4 terms on the Corona City Council. She has several publicly enumerated positions that are at odds with the Republican values she claims to hold. Her record as a community leader is dotted with spectacular failure as has her personal record. Any of these events by themselves would not be fatal… all of them behind the same candidate is indeed a toxic cocktail of baggage not even a C-17 could haul away.

Then, of course there was the small issue of her behavior enraging local citizens to the point of organizing a recall against her and two of her colleagues and her conduct on the city council inflaming relations with the labor units to the point of legitimate strike threats.

We’re going to unpack the baggage that Spiegel is carrying. For a variety of reasons, Eric Linder is a superior option for County Supervisor. We will discuss some of Mr. Linder’s merits as we proceed forward as well.